The Parameters of "Spaceship Earth"

Our little Spaceship Earth is only eight thousand miles in diameter, which is almost a negligible dimension in the great vastness of space. Our nearest star — our energy-supplying mother-ship, the Sun — is ninety-two million miles away, and the nearest star is one hundred thousand times further away. It takes approximately four and one third years for light to get to us from the next nearest energy supply ship star. That is the kind of space-distanced pattern we are flying. Our little Spa...

 Energy from the Sun to Earth

It is a feature of the way the world is made that two protons together have less mass than two protons separately. This is a startling but indisputable fact. Weigh two protons separately, then weigh them together: the numbers don't match. The numbers differ by about 1 percent. This curious difference is not to be explained by some law of nature; it is a law of nature, as basic to the way the world works as any fact in our possession. The mass discrepancy is equivalent to an amount of energy g...

 How Photosynthesis Builds Energy Against Entropy

No law of physics is more basic than the law of entropy, the tendency of the universe to move toward disorder and death. But life bucks the tide. using available free energy wherever it can get it, and hereabouts the most abundant source of energy is sunlight. The mayflower constructs its tiny oasis of order by drawing upon a corresponding increase of disorder at the center of the Sun, where hydrogen is fused into helium. There, deep at the heart of our planet's star, is the source of the ene...